1864 – American Civil War Overland Campaign: Battle of Cold Harbor – The Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee engages the Army of the Potomac under Ulysses S. Grant & George G. Meade.

1866 – In the Fenian Invasion of Canada, John O’Neill leads 850 Fenian raiders across the Niagara River at Buffalo, New York/Fort Erie, Ontario, as part of an effort to free Ireland from the English. Canadian militia and British regulars repulse the invaders in over the next three days, at a cost of 9 dead and 38 wounded to the Fenian’s 19 dead and about 17 wounded.

1889 – Johnstown Flood: Over 2,200 people die after a dam break sends a 60-foot (18-meter) wall of water over the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

1902 – Second Boer War: The Treaty of Vereeniging ends the war and ensures British control of South Africa.

1910 – Creation of the Union of South Africa.

1911 – R.M.S. Titanic launched.

1916 – World War I: Battle of Jutland – The British Grand Fleet under the command of Sir John Jellicoe & Sir David Beatty engage the Kaiserliche Marine under the command of Reinhard Scheer & Franz von Hipper in the largest naval battle of the war, which proves indecisive.

1921 – Tulsa Race Riot: A civil unrest in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, the official death toll is 39.

1924 – The Soviet Union signs an agreement with the Peking government, referring to Outer Mongolia as an “integral part of the Republic of China,” whose “sovereignty” therein the Soviet Union promises to respect.

1927 – The last Ford Model T rolls off the assembly line after a production run of 15,007,003 vehicles.

1942 – World War II: Imperial Japanese Navy midget submarines begin a series of attacks on Sydney, Australia.

1961 – Republic of South Africa created.

1962 – The West Indies Federation dissolves.

1970 – The Ancash earthquake causes a landslide that buries the town of Yungay, Peru; more than 47,000 people are killed.

1971 – In accordance with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1968, observation of Memorial Day occurs on the last Monday in May for the first time, rather than on the traditional Memorial Day of May 30.

1973 – The United States Senate votes to cut off funding for the bombing of Khmer Rouge targets within Cambodia, hastening the end of the Cambodian Civil War.

1958 – Memorial Day: The remains of two unidentified American servicemen, killed in action during World War II and the Korean War, are buried at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery.

1966 – Former Congolese Prime Minister Evariste Kimba and several other politicians are publicly executed in Kinshasa on the orders of President Joseph Mobutu.

1967 – At the Ascot Park in Gardena, California, daredevil Evel Knievel jumps his motorcycle over 16 cars lined-up in a row.

Share this:

Like this:

585 BC – A solar eclipse occurs, as predicted by Greek philosopher and scientist Thales, while Alyattes is battling Cyaxares in the Battle of the Eclipse, leading to a truce. This is one of the cardinal dates from which other dates can be calculated.

1503 – James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor are married by Pope Alexander VI according to Papal Bull.

1503 – The Treaty of Everlasting Peace between Scotland and England is signed, which would actually last 10 years.

1533 – The Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declares the marriage of King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn valid

1588 – The Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, begins to set sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel. (It will take until May 30 for all ships to leave port).

1644 – Bolton Massacre by Royalist troops under the command of the Earl of Derby.

1754 – French and Indian War: In the first engagement of the war, Virginia militia under 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington defeat a French reconnaissance party in the Battle of Jumonville Glen in what is now Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania.

1774 – American Revolutionary War: The first Continental Congress convenes.

1830 – President Andrew Jackson signs The Indian Removal Act which relocates Indians

1863 – American Civil War: The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first African American regiment, leaves Boston, Massachusetts, to fight for the Union.

1892 – In San Francisco, California, John Muir organizes the Sierra Club.

1905 – Russo-Japanese War: The Battle of Tsushima ends with the destruction of the Russian Baltic Fleet by Admiral Togo Heihachiro and the Imperial Japanese Navy.

1918 – The Democratic Republic of Armenia and Azerbaijan Democratic Republic declare their independence from the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic.

1926 – Ditadura Nacional established in Portugal to suppress the unrest of the First Republic.

1930 – The Chrysler Building in New York City officially opens.

1934 – Near Callander, Ontario, the Dionne quintuplets are born to Olivia and Elzire Dionne, later becoming the first quintuplets to survive infancy.

1934 – The Glyndebourne festival in England is inaugurated.

1936 – Alan Turing submits On Computable Numbers for publication.

1937 – The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, DC, who pushes a button signaling the start of vehicle traffic over the span.

1937 – Neville Chamberlain becomes British Prime Minister.

1940 – World War II: Belgium surrenders to Germany.

1940 – World War II: Norwegian, French, Polish and British forces recapture Narvik. First allied infantry victory in World War II.

1942 – World War II: In retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Nazis in Czechoslovakia kill over 1,800 people.

1961 – Peter Benenson’s article “The Forgotten Prisoners” is published in several internationally read newspapers. This will later be thought of as the founding of the human rights organization Amnesty International.

1964 – The Palestine Liberation Organization is formed.

1970 – The formerly united Free University of Brussels officially splits into two separate entities, the French-speaking Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Dutch-speaking Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

1975 – Fifteen West African countries sign the Treaty of Lagos, thus creating the Economic Community of West African States.

1977 – In Southgate, Kentucky, the Beverly Hills Supper Club is engulfed in fire, killing 165 people inside.

1978 – Second round of the presidential elections in Upper Volta. Elections won by incumbent Sangoulé Lamizana.

1979 – Constantine Karamanlis signs the full treaty of the accession of Greece with the European Economic Community.

1982 – Falklands War: British forces defeat the Argentines at the Battle of Goose Green.

1987 – 19-year-old West German pilot Mathias Rust evades Soviet Union air defenses and lands a private plane in Red Square in Moscow. He is immediately detained and is not released until August 3, 1988.

1987 – A robot probe finds the wreckage of the USS Monitor near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

1991 – The capital city of Addis Ababa, falls to the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, ending both the Derg regime in Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Civil War.

1996 – U.S. President Bill Clinton’s former business partners in the Whitewater land deal, James McDougal and Susan McDougal, and Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker, are convicted of fraud.

1998 – Nuclear testing: Pakistan responds to a series of Indian nuclear tests with five of its own, prompting the United States, Japan, and other nations to impose economic sanctions.

1999 – In Milan, Italy, after 22 years of restoration work, Leonardo da Vinci’s newly-restored masterpiece “The Last Supper” is put back on display.

1999 – Two Swedish police officers are murdered with their own fire arms by the bank robbers Jackie Arklöv and Tony Olsson after a dramatic car chase.

2002 – NATO declares Russia a limited partner in the Western alliance.

2003 – Peter Hollingworth becomes the first Governor-General of Australia to resign his office as a result of criticism of his conduct.

Share this:

Like this:

927 – Battle of the Bosnian Highlands Simeon I of Bulgaria decisively defeated by King Tomislav of Croatia.

1120 – Richard III of Capua anointed as prince a fortnight before his untimely death.

1153 – Malcolm IV becomes King of Scotland.

1328 – Philip VI is crowned King of France.

1647 – Peter Stuyvesant was inaugurated as Director-General of New Netherland.

1703 – Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg.

1798 – The Battle of Oulart Hill occurs in Wexford, Ireland.

1812 – South American Wars of Independence: In Bolivia, the battle of La Coronilla, in which the women from Cochabamba fought against the Spanish army.

1813 – War of 1812: In Canada, American forces capture Fort George.

1849 – The Great Hall of Euston station, London opened.

1860 – Giuseppe Garibaldi begins his attack on Palermo, Sicily, as part of the Italian Unification.

1883 – Alexander III is crowned Tsar of Russia.

1896 – The F4-strength St. Louis-East St. Louis Tornado hits in St. Louis, Missouri and East Saint Louis, Illinois, killing at least 255 people and incurring $2.9 billion in damages.

1905 – Russo-Japanese War: The Battle of Tsushima begins.

1907 – A Bubonic plague outbreak begins in San Francisco, California.

1908 – Maulana Hakeem Noor-ud-Din elected first Khalifa of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community

1919 – The NC-4 aircraft arrives in Lisbon after completing the first transatlantic flight.

1927 – The Ford Motor Company ceases manufacturing the Ford Model T and begins to retool plants to make Ford Model A’s.

1930 – The 1,046 feet (319 meters) tall Chrysler Building in New York (tallest man-made structure at the time) opens to the public.

1933 – New Deal: The U.S. Federal Securities Act is signed into law requiring the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission.

1933 – The Walt Disney Company releases the cartoon The Three Little Pigs, with its hit song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”

1933 – The Century of Progress World’s Fair opens in Chicago.

1935 – New Deal: The Supreme Court of the United States declares the National Industrial Recovery Act to be unconstitutional in the case A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, (295 U.S. 495).

1937 – In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County.

1939 – DC Comics publishes its second superhero in Detective Comics #27; he is Batman, one of the most topical comic book superheroes of all time.

1940 – World War II: 97 out of 99 members of a Royal Norfolk Regiment unit are massacred while trying to surrender at Dunkirk. The German commander, Captain Fritz Knoechlein, is eventually hanged for war crimes.

1941 – World War II: U.S. President Roosevelt proclaims an “unlimited national emergency.”

1941 – World War II: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic killing almost 2,100 men.

1957 – Toronto’s 1050 CHUM AM becomes Canada’s first radio station to only broadcast top 40 Rock n’ Roll music format.

1958 – The F-4 Phantom II flies for the first time.

1960 – In Turkey, a military coup removed President Celal Bayar and the rest of the democratic government from office.

1963 – Folk music singer Bob Dylan releases The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album, which features “Blowin’ in the Wind” and several other of his best-known songs.

1964 – Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru dies in office.

1965 – Vietnam War: United States warships begin bombardments of National Liberation Front targets within South Vietnam for the first time.

1967 – Australians vote in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians, and to count them in the national census.

1967 – The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67) is christened by Jacqueline Kennedy and her daughter Caroline.

1971 – The Dahlerau train disaster, the worst railway accident in West Germany, kills 46 people and injures 25 near Wuppertal.

1980 – The Gwangju Massacre: airborne and army troops of South Korea retake the city of Gwangju from civil militias, killing at least 207 and possibly many more.

1995 – In Charlottesville, Virginia, actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in a riding competition.

1996 – First Chechnya War: Russian President Boris Yeltsin meets with Chechnyan rebels for the first time and negotiates a cease-fire in the war.

1997 – The F5-strength Jarrell Tornado slams into the small town of Jarrell, Texas, killing 27 people.

1997 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Paula Jones can pursue her sex harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton while he is in office.

1998 – Oklahoma City bombing: Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the terrorist plot.

1999 – The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands indicts Slobodan Miloševic and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo.

2006 – The May 2006 Java earthquake strikes at 5:53:58 AM local time (22:53:58 UTC May 26) devastating Bantul and the city of Yogyakarta killing over 6,600 people.

Share this:

Like this:

451 – The Battle of Avarayr between Armenian rebels and the Sassanid Empire takes place. The Armenians are defeated militarily but are guaranteed freedom to openly practice Christianity.

1293 – Earthquake strikes Kamakura, Japan, kills 30,000.

1328 – William of Ockham, Franciscan Minister-General Michael of Cesena and two other Franciscan leaders secretly leave Avignon, fearing a death sentence from Pope John XXII.

1538 – Geneva expels John Calvin and his followers from the city. Calvin lives in exile in Strasbourg for the next three years.

1637 – Pequot War: A combined Protestant and Mohegan force under German Captain John Mason attacks a Pequot village in Connecticut, massacring approximately 500 Native Americans.

1647 – Alse Young becomes the first person executed as a witch in the American colonies, when she is hanged in Hartford, Connecticut.

1670 – In Dover, Charles II of Great Britain and King Louis XIV of France sign the Secret Treaty of Dover.

1736 – Battle of Ackia: British and Chickasaw soldiers repel a French and Choctaw attack on the Chickasaw village of Ackia, near present-day Tupelo, Mississippi. The French, under Louisiana governor Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, had sought to link Louisiana with Acadia and the other northern colonies of New France.

1770 – The Orlov Revolt, a first attempt to revolt against the Turks before the Greek War of Independence ends in disaster for the Greeks.

1805 – Napoléon Bonaparte (Napoleon I) assumes the title of King of Italy and is crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in the Duomo di Milano gothic cathedral in Milan.

1830 – The Indian Removal Act is passed by the U.S. Congress; it is signed into law by President Andrew Jackson two days later.

1864 – Montana is organized as a United States territory.

1865 – American Civil War: Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi division, is the last general of the Confederate Army to surrender, at Galveston, Texas.

1868 – The impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson ends, with Johnson being found not guilty by one vote.

1869 – Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

1879 – Russia and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Gandamak establishing an Afghan state.

1917 – A powerful F4 tornado rips Mattoon, Illinois apart, killing 101 people and injuring 689. It was the world’s longest-lasting tornado, lasting for over 7 hours and traveling 293 miles, spreading death and destruction along its path.

1918 – The Democratic Republic of Georgia is established.

1928 – The first motion picture is projected publicly in Athens, Greece.

1936 – In the House of Commons of Northern Ireland, Tommy Henderson begins speaking on the Appropriation Bill. By the time he sat down in the early hours of the following morning, he had spoken for 10 hours.

1938 – The House Un-American Activities Committee begins its first session.

1940 – World War II: Battle of Dunkirk – In France, Allied forces begin a massive evacuation from Dunkirk.

1942 – World War II: Battle of Bir Hakeim.

1948 – The U.S. Congress passes Public Law 557 which permanently establishes the Civil Air Patrol as an auxiliary of the United States Air Force.

1966 – British Guiana gains independence, becoming Guyana.

1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 10 returns to earth after a successful eight-day test of all the components needed for the forthcoming first manned moon landing.

1992 – Charles Geschke, co-founder of Adobe Systems, Inc. was kidnapped at gunpoint from the Adobe parking lot in Mountain View, California for $650,000 and is held hostage in a rented house in Hollister, California. The FBI rescues him four days later.

1998 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Ellis Island, the historic gateway for millions of immigrants, is mainly in the state of New Jersey, not New York.

2002 – The Mars Odyssey finds signs of huge water ice deposits on the planet Mars.

2002 – Álvaro Uribe becomes President of Colombia.

2003 – Only three days after a previous record, Sherpa Lakpa Gelu climbs Mount Everest in 10 hours 56 minutes. The tourism ministry of Nepal confirms this record in July that year.

2004 – The New York Times publishes an admission of journalistic failings, claiming that its flawed reporting and lack of skepticism towards sources during the buildup to the 2003 war in Iraq helped promote the belief that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

2004 – Terry Nichols is found guilty of 161 state murder charges for helping carry out the Oklahoma City bombing.

1935 – Jesse Owens of Ohio State University breaks five world records and ties a sixth at the Big Ten Conference Track and Field Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

1936 – The Remington Rand strike, led by the American Federation of Labor, begins.

1938 – Spanish Civil War: Bombing of Alicante, 313 deaths.

1940 – World War II: The Battle of Dunkirk begins.

1946 – The parliament of Transjordan makes Abdullah I of Jordan their king.

1953 – Nuclear testing: At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducts its first and only nuclear artillery test.

1955 – In the United States, a night time F5 tornado strikes the small city of Udall, Kansas, killing 80 and injuring 273. It was the deadliest tornado to ever occur in the state and the 23rd deadliest in the U.S.

1961 – Apollo program: U.S. president John F. Kennedy announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a “man on the moon” before the end of the decade.